The Daily Signal - Christopher Rufo on Critical Race Theory in Schools

Episode Date: May 4, 2021

Critical race theory is making its way into institutions across America. Christopher Rufo, a visiting fellow for domestic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation, joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss how critical race theory is affecting what children learn in schools. (The Daily Signal is Heritage's multimedia news outlet.) "Critical race theory is an academic discipline ... that holds that racism is the driving force in society, that in order to understand power relations, in order to understand institutions such as the law, education, the Constitution, [and] social relations, you have to understand that through the lens of race," Rufo, also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, says. Rufo explains how critical race theory is affecting corporate America and what can be done about it. We also cover these stories: Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., says that those who contend the 2020 election was stolen are “poisoning our democratic system.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell signals that President Joe Biden’s $4.1 trillion "infrastructure" package will receive zero support from Senate Republicans. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs a bill invalidating all remaining emergency COVID-19 orders across his state. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, May 4th. I'm Doug Blair. And I'm Virginia Allen. On today's show, Rachel Del Judas talks with Christopher Rufo, a visiting fellow for domestic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He discusses how critical race theory is affecting what children learn in schools and what parents should know about it. They also discuss how critical race theory is affecting corporate America. And don't forget, if you're enjoying this, this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage

others to subscribe. Now, on to our top news. Wyoming Republican Representative Liz Cheney says those who claim that the 2020 election was stolen are poisoning our democratic system. Cheney tweeted on Monday that the 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading the big lie, turning their back on the rule of law and poisoning our democratic system. Cheney's tweet came shortly after former President Donald Trump released a statement saying that the fraudulent presidential election of 2020 will be from this day forth, known as the Big Lie. Cheney is one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach President Trump after the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled on Monday that President Biden's massive 4.1 $1 trillion infrastructure policy package will receive zero support from the Senate GOP. In a press conference against broader opposition to Democratic policy priorities, McConnell stated that the bill, quote, is not going to get support from our side, according to CNBC. Biden's current proposal, the $2.3 trillion American jobs plan and the $1.8 trillion American Families plan, contains a vast array of proposed government spending, including repairing roads, ports and rail, as well as government subsidized pre-K and child care. Sub- Republicans have countered Biden's $4.1 trillion plan with a $568 billion plan,

which the president signaled he was willing to negotiate on. Without Republican support in the evenly divided Senate, Democrats will have to use reconciliation, a procedure that allows lawmakers in certain circumstances to bypass the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster in order to pass the legislation. Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a bill invalidating the remaining emergency COVID-19 orders across the state of Florida. DeSantis made the announcement Monday morning per WFLA News Channel 8. Today I'm going to let the legislatures come up.

But what I'm going to do, I'm going to sign the bill. It's effective July 1st. I'll also sign an executive order pursuant to that bill invalidating all remaining local emergency COVID orders. effective on July 1st. But then to bridge the gap between then and now, I'm going to suspend under my executive power the local emergency orders as it relates to COVID. I think that's the evidence-based thing to do. I think the fact that I think folks that are saying that they need to be policing people at this point, if you're saying that, you really are saying you don't believe in the vaccines. You don't believe in the data. You don't believe in the science. We've

embrace the vaccines, we've embraced the science on it. The data I've said has been good from the beginning in terms of clinical trials. It's even better in real life. And so it's available. We want everyone to get it. And if you get it, just know that the reason you get it is because we want to be able to have people enjoy themselves and live freely in the state of Florida. The bill also prohibits vaccine passports. DeSantis said that the people of Florida have a right to participate in society, go to a restaurant, movie, a ballgame, all these things without having to divulge whether or not they have received the vaccine. In a surprise announcement on Friday, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser updated the city's coronavirus

restrictions to include a ban on standing and dancing at weddings. While the new orders allow indoor and outdoor weddings to operate at 25% capacity or to have up to 250 people, guests must remain seated and socially distance at all times during the ceremony. Mayor Bowser's office responded to questions about the new orders from local news outlet Fox 5D.C. Saying the dancing band is an extra layer of safety to reduce the spread of COVID-19, because when people stand and dance, their behavior changes. The news is leading many couples to move their weddings to neighboring Virginia and Maryland, which do not have such restrictions in place.

Now stay tuned for Rachel Del Judis' conversation with Christopher Rufo as they discuss critical race theory and how it's affecting society. Never has it been more important for us to fight for America. Each day we see the penalties of progressive policies across our nation. Our elections are under assault. Our economic freedom is on the decline and our culture is turning its back on the founding principles that have made us the freest, most prosperous nation in history. That's why the Heritage Foundation developed a plan to take on the left and take back our country. The Citizens Guide to Fight for America provides a series of heritage recommended action items delivered on a regular basis to your inbox. Make an impact in your community and in our country. Sign up for the Citizens Guide at heritage.org slash citizens guide and join in the fight for America today.

We're joined on the Daily Signal by Chris Rufo. He's a visiting fellow for domestic studies at the Heritage Foundation and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Christopher, it's great to have you with us on the Daily Signal. It's good to be with you. Well, you just dropped a paper for the Heritage Foundation called Critical Race Theory would not solve racial inequality. It would deepen it.

Why is this the case? Can you tell us about this? Well, I mean, it's the case because you have to separate a premise from conclusion when you look at ideologies, when you look at policy recommendations, recommendations. And I think it's the case in giving people the benefit of the doubt that the critical race theorists in general have the intention to reduce racial inequalities, to achieve what they call racial equity. But, you know, you have to actually ask, well, what are specifically are they proposing? So I go through a number of their specific proposals, and then I share evidence

essentially that to the contrary, that they make this mistake that they assume that all inequality is driven by capitalist domination, racial oppression, patriarchy, the whole series of structures that they identify as needing to be overthrown, where, you know, their policy prescriptions would in many cases actually damage the things that we know from social science that is across the kind of ideological and partisan spectrum actually really important, things like family structure, things like educational attainment, things like workforce participation. Those three institutions, actual live human concrete institutions, are extremely important determinants of poverty and inequality. And yet the critical race theorists seem to dismiss them altogether, preferring

these large-scale revolutionary programs that historically have done nothing, you know, maybe in some cases they flatten inequality, only because they make everyone poor and sub-ableness. to tyrannical rule. Well, for those who aren't familiar with critical race theory, can you just give us a refresher on what it is? Yeah, critical race theory is an academic discipline that came to fruition, I guess, you know, 30 years ago now, that holds that racism is the driving force in society that in order to understand power relations, in order to understand institutions such as the law, education, the Constitution, social relations, you have to understand that through the lens of race.

And they argue that the United States is on the surface, a country that preaches equality, that preaches freedom, but these are actually camouflages for racial oppression, capitalist exploitation, et cetera. We've done a lot of work on reporting on critical race theory and how we're seeing it affect children in schools. Can you give us some examples of what you've seen? Yeah, I just finished up, I guess now, a 12-part series of investigative reports,

all original reporting on critical race theory in schools. And, you know, the stuff that you uncover is pretty brutal. It's pretty rough. It's first graders in Cooper Tino, California, being forced to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities and then rank themselves according to power and privilege. It's fifth grade teachers in Springfield, Missouri, being forced to locate themselves on an oppression matrix. So telling certain teachers by their nature of their inborn characteristics,

they're oppressors, others are oppressed. It's teachers in Philadelphia forcing fifth grade students to celebrate black communism, simulate an Angela Davis black power rally, and then sharing videos that paint a kind of horrific and very one-sided picture of the United States in a school in this case where 87% of students fail to achieve basically literacy. And I could go on and on, you know, by reporting is all out there, you can find it, but the conclusion is that you have this very strange moment in which elite academic institutions, some of the most expensive private schools, are adopting this racial equity mania, at the same time

that some of the lowest performing and poorer schools are also adopting it. And you have to wonder what does this serve, whose interests, and in what capacity. And I think a lot of lot of it with the elite schools is that they're excited about the kind of moral posturing of this. And then for the really failing school districts like Buffalo, like Philadelphia, like Chicago in some parts of Chicago, my read on it, it almost seems like a diversion mechanism. These schools where, you know, large majority of students cannot read and write at basic proficiency by the time to graduate middle school. They're shifting the blame to these abstract societal problems while ignoring the fact that in many cases these schools have resources,

$15,000, $18,000 a year per student, and have failed year after year after year to educate kids in the very basics of what they're going to need to understand in order to make progress. So we have this really strange paradox where these institutions that in my are perpetuating inequalities, are positioning themselves as the great fighters of inequality. And I think it's totally bogus, it's totally fake, it's totally self-serving. What can parents do to make sure their kids aren't being taught critical race theory? Parents, I mean, parents can do a lot. You have a couple of options. One, you can exit. That's probably a smart move for people who are in very politicized educational environments.

You can put your kid in a different school, you can move, you can take evasive action in order to avoid this stuff. But for parents that suspect that they're in a more moderate political environment where they could have some power, some influence, some voice, they have to really fight back. And I think that what I've seen as probably the most inspiring example are Asian American parents in schools, across the country from Virginia to California to Washington State who see critical race theory as racially discriminatory against their kids, who see critical race theory as frankly a waste of time comparing it to other kind of core academic pursuits. And then they also see it as seeking to destroy the avenues for academic excellence that frankly Asian American kids dominate, if you look at the outcomes.

And so Asian American parents in California and Virginia and Washington State, other places have organized first by coming together as a group, figuring out what the problem is, demanding to know what's in the curriculum, going to the teacher, going to the principal, going to the school board, running, you know, in some cases political action committees, leaking materials to the media, running a pretty sophisticated, campaign to protect what they see as the best education for their kids. What about corporate America? Are we seeing critical race theory infiltrate there?

We are. I don't know. I'm torn. I think that a lot of it is just a reflection that big companies in major cities that have highly educated workforces, part of it is just that these ideas have permeated a professional and managerial class mindset, they take root into corporations in HR, in diversity departments, and philanthropic initiatives. But I think it's less deeply rooted than in government or education because ultimately a lot of these corporate leaders aren't true believers in this stuff. They're doing it as a form of insurance. They don't want to get protested. They don't want to get boycotted. They don't want to get trash in the New York Times. So they put up these signals to protect themselves, almost like, you know, shops in, you know, Sicily would, would, you know,

kind of pay a little bit of protection money to the mafia in order to not get their store burn down. It's the same process. So I think if the political grounds shift, corporations will shift very quickly and much more easily than other institutions. What about media coverage? Is critical race theory infiltrating there at all? It's interesting. I mean, in a formal sense, a lot of the mainstream media outlets, yeah, are pushing, whether they know it or not, that can critical race theory ideology in their coverage. But my sense is that critical race theory itself is not very popular. The media seems reluctant to defend it on the merits. They like to kind of name call. And I think that the more you expose what's happening in institutions, that is, I mean, truly indefensible, you're starting to see, even center-left media starting to kind of pull away.

There's still going to be a hardcore set of people that just push, push, push, push, but I don't know. It really is kind of a bewildering moment is, do people believe this stuff? I don't think so. I think people are becoming more and more skeptical. As media splinters into rival camps, they're, you know, the single story, the single narrative, the single framework can't hold. I think over time that's what we'll see.

Well, in a speech you wrote on Critical Race Theory for Hillsdale, you said that too many Americans have developed an acute fear of speaking up about social and political issues, especially those involving race. Christopher, how can this be fixed? I mean, speak, right? I mean, it's a pretty simple problem. If people are too scared to speak, they have to speak anyways. I mean, it's like, in one sense, it's probably the simplest problem of all to solve.

but it would require the virtue of courage. And that's something that I think many people right now lack, and many people right now need to be inspired in order to summon that virtue into their daily life. And, you know, I'm hopeful. I think what I've seen in the last six months is that whistleblowers or dissenters or conscientious objectors within institutions

are starting to come forward. Last year you had someone from the National Nuclear Laboratory stand up against what was happening. You've had teachers in New York, parents in Virginia and California standing up against this at frankly grave personal risk to their reputation, their employment, their peace of mind, but are making a principled stand. And I'm persuaded that this process can only get easier over time. as more people speak out, as more people simply just state their convictions, we'll see the cost of having courage decrease. So actually become easier to do. And my sense is that we're getting there.

We're already at some kind of inflection point. And it's something I hope it continues. Would you say there's any relationship between critical race theory and Black Lives Matter? That's something that is being talked about a lot. Is there any relationship there? Yeah, I think so. I think that if you read that, if you read, the critical race theory, law review articles and position papers and scholarly books from 1995. And then you listen to the speeches at full length from a Black Lives Matter rally in Minneapolis or Seattle or Portland. It's just a translation effect where they're taking the ideas, basic concepts from critical race theory that are very academic, that are very abstract.

and they're distilling it down to street language, to political sloganeering, to banners and posters and other very basic syntax of political persuasion. So I think if you look at critical race theory as an ideology and then you actually listen to the speeches that are driving the street protests, they're essentially the same thing. They're just a translation from the academy to the street. How would you encourage policymakers to respond to critical race theory? Two ways. First, you need to protect your public institutions from this ideology that promotes race essentialism, the idea that you should be judged on the basis of your race, that promotes collective guilt, the idea that you are guilty of something that someone else did historically

because you share some ancestral background with them. It also promotes neo-segregation. So splitting dormitories, splitting public facilities, splitting training sessions. And all three of those things, in my view, are already illegal under the Civil Rights Act to promote in public institutions. But legislators have an opportunity, and legislators in, I think now 11 states are introducing legislation to this effect, to say these are the things that we don't teach in our schools. These are the things that we don't promote in our public institutions. It's actually incumbent upon legislators. to set the ground rules, to set the guardrails,

to make sure that public institutions reflect the values of the public. And then second, policymakers need to think much bigger and in a much more structural way on how you can change some of the fundamentals, some of the fundamental institutional patterns and funding mechanisms and powers in order to decentralize as much authority, decentralized as much control, decentralized as many resources as possible, back to American families, frankly. And then if the families are in control, set the agenda, if the families can make choices, if the families control the directionality, the kind of the flow of resources,

we're going to see very different public institutions. We're going to see very different values reflected that in my view are going to be, you know, some people want to do critical race there thing, great. but the vast majority of people do not, and public institutions should be shaped in order to achieve that. Well, before we go, you started a new center called Battlefront. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, it's a small studio, and it's something that I'm running with a very small team, and we're going to be doing a series of projects where we take some of the academic or journalistic work that I do for Manhattan Institute or have done for Heritage Foundation,

and take it out of Think Tank World and actually get it out into society, get it out into those cultural and social and political fights. And what we're doing is really three things. We're doing creative projects, so filmmaking and other creative content that reaches an audience. We're also working on policy to actually get policy out of the whole,

halls of off of my computer and into the world. And then we're also doing lawsuits. I've organized a coalition. We now have more than 100 attorneys, some volunteer and then some institutional players that are filing lawsuits across the country. We're going to file, I think, at least 10 by the end of the summer to fight some of these pernicious, divisive, race-based ideologies within public institutions to establish that actually these programs and practices are not only morally and intellectually bankrupt, but they're actually illegal under existing law. So those are the projects that we're going to be doing, and very excited about it. Well, congratulations, and Christopher, thank you for joining us on The Daily Signal. It's great having you. Thank you.

And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeart Radio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening and we'll be back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Rachel Del Judas, sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, visitdailySignal.com.